The Dutch Justice Ministry has sacked an employee for spreading pornography, including paedophiliac photographs, through the ministry's internal computer network, a ministry spokesman said this week.
The man was fired on July 17th after an internal inquiry established that he was using justice ministry computers to gather large quantities of "a diverse range of pornography, including a small part of child pornography," spokesman Wijnand Stevens said.
He then distributed the material to certain computers on the ministry's internal network, he added.
However, Stevens insisted that there was no link with the Internet paedophile ring that was uncovered in the Dutch seaside town of Zandvoort two weeks ago.
The man, who worked in the computer department, was suspended in April shortly after an investigation was launched following a tip-off from a colleague.
The internal inquiry is continuing to establish whether anyone else was involved in the affair, if any other co-workers were aware of it and whether they took any action against it, Stevens said.
"Other people must have known about this and the inquiry is trying to establish what they did about it," he said.
A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office said that charges had not yet been brought against the man as police still had to finish their own inquiry, which is likely to take several weeks.
Possessing child pornography is a criminal offence in the Netherlands.
Even though the justice ministry stressed that the employee was not in a position of influence within the ministry, the affair is still very embarrassing for the outgoing justice minister, Winnie Sordrager.
Sordrager and the police have been severely criticised over the mishandling of an alleged child pornography ring operating out of a town in western Netherlands that was uncovered two weeks ago.
Police revealed that a Germanborn Dutchman, named GerritJan Ulrich, had distributed thousands of paedophile photographs of children as young as 12 months old from his home and computer shop in Zandvoort.
Ulrich was murdered in June near the Italian town of Pisa.
